GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Mayor George Heartwell said the city will do “a thorough analysis” of the voting process that produced lengthy lines at some polling places Tuesday, Nov. 6. To help identify and solve problems, he wants to hear from voters about their Election Day experience.

“To me, it’s important to listen to the people who were either inconvenienced or the people who were poll watchers in those few precincts where we had real snarls,” Heartwell said. “These major snafus only happen every four years (during presidential elections), so we’ve got some time to look at the problems and implement some solutions.”

MLive readers already have shared some of the problems they saw at Community Revival Center, where voters waited as long as four hours to cast a ballot, and elsewhere in Grand Rapids:

"I experienced a same scenerio today as I waited an hour in line to vote at the station on Fuller on the SE side. After an hour in line with lines being shifted and only one person checking in voters I needed to use the restroom. Upon my return there was no getting my place back in line due to the unorganized chaos of that location. I did not have the time to be placed at the back of the ever expanding line to begin the process again. This was the first election since I turned 18 that I was unable to cast my vote. I am proud of my fellow voters for the great turn out but embarassed for my area at the lack of organization and volunteers for this to go smoothly. I will be voting by absentee ballot for the next election!"

"Mulick Park had many of the same issues described above, including: empty voting booths, a small facility and difficult parking. The fact that Grand Rapids Christian Middle School is across the street, and had parents dropping off in the morning and picking up in the afternoon, only compounds the traffic and parking problems. The lines at Mulick were substantial all day long. Less than a mile away, at Plymouth Heights church, there was plenty of parking and short waits all day long. So, yes, the city needs to look at these issues carefully between now and 2016."

"I was one of the first 50 voters at Plymouth Heights and it was very poorly run. I saw one of the poll workers highlight the wrong name on the checklist of who had voted. Then two minutes later the lead poll worker shouted out, "Who has ballot number XX?" The poor person with that ballot really wanted to remain anonymous, but had to respond, thus losing that anonymity. Two minutes after that, the same poll worker shouted out, "Does anyone have two ballots?". Sure enough someone had been handed two ballots. There were only 5 voting stations and the line was getting long, so people began filling out their ballots on tables and chairs that were in the room. It was not a reassuring experience!"

City Clerk Lauri Parks outlined 5 reasons for long voting lines. Heartwell, who noted Tuesday that voters were taking a long time to complete a complicated ballot, also identified a bottlenecked voter check-in process as a major cause.

“I saw many times when there were several vacant voting booths while there will still long lines of people waiting to get in,” he said. “Maybe we can expect this is going to be the new norm that we’re going to have lots and lots of ballot initiatives so we’ve got to figure out how to get people into the voting booth expeditiously.

“There have to be ways that (check-in process) can be improved, and maybe through the use of digital technology we can improve it.”

“My wife and I were chairpersons of adjoining precincts on Tuesday. Neither of our precincts incurred significant delays, but when they did, the bottleneck was a lack of open voting booths -- despite the fact that we had twice as many booths as we would have for a typical election. The reason our precincts were able to process voters quickly was due to the use of electronic poll books, which enabled us to process most voters in under a minute. Expanding the use of electronic poll books should significantly decrease wait times in the future.”

State Rep. Brandon Dillon, D-Grand Rapids, said he is co-sponsoring a bill by state Rep. Woodrow Stanley, D-Flint, that would permit early voting in Michigan – from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekends for two weeks prior to Election Day.

“I’ve got a feeling there’s going to be a lot of (bills to that effect),” Dillon said. “It’s well past time that we really take a serious look at it.”